Market One Media Group is a Vancouver-based media agency that has created a powerful digital hub for Canadian public companies. MMG is Canada’s largest content creation and distribution engine for companies in the capital markets sector. The disruptive ’push model’ approach for MMG has resulted in new revenue pathways for established media platforms, like Postmedia, Bell and Rogers.

We recently spoke to Hasnain Raza, Vice President of Digital Marketing at Market One Media Group, about how digital marketers can use tools like GAIN to make their agency-client relationships as good as they can be in an ever-changing media climate. Check out his advice below.

1. Could you tell us a little bit about yourself and how you ended up in your current role?

Growing up with people from many cultures and experiences in Zambia ignited my passion to share stories that would push boundaries. During my time in university, I focused on learning about story-telling and data science in marketing as it would help measure campaigns from strategy to execution.

I then went to work for 2 ‘million-dollar’ Highline VC startups, Shelfie (acquired by Kobo) and ePACT Network. Following my experiences there, Market One Media Group was the next calling, where I’m the Vice President of Digital Marketing and scaling the digital team.

I also began taking a passion for entrepreneurship and making meaningful change in society. This lead to me co-founding a non-profit organization, KickOff Canada Foundation, and being the Co-Chair of former Vancouver Mayor, Sam Sullivan’s Provincial Election Campaign with the BC Liberals, which we won. I also have a podcast called the TIA Show that has powerful conversations with NFL players, media personalities and CEOs of successful business ventures.

2. What words do you think describe the ideal agency-client relationship?

It’s very simple at its core. Communication. The biggest lesson we have learnt here at Market One Media Group when managing over 100 social media channels is that there always needs to be clear expectations, guidelines, and process flows.

It all boils down to having proper communication in place. If you figure that out, clients are always aware of what’s going on, they feel involved and we, as the agency, are aware of what we need to do in order to execute campaigns properly.

3. What’s one tip you would give to agencies to make their client relationships as good as they can be?

Use project management tools as much as you can. Platforms such as Wunderlist and Asana are lifesavers and allow agencies that have multiple clients to always stay on top of everything.

4. Before GAIN, how did you manage to gather client content approvals? What was the most time-consuming part of the process?

Before GAIN, life was hard. Seriously. We were using Excel sheets and had complicated character count formulas for each platform, created Google Drive folders and hyperlinked images onto there, and clients had no idea what they were looking at.

Another problem was that we would then have to transfer all the content onto their respective channels, doubling our work. It wasn’t working, and I could not imagine how we could scale properly if we didn’t have GAIN.

5. When you switched to GAIN, how did things change with your clients? What is the biggest problem GAIN solves for you?

When we made the switch, clients loved GAIN. They were huge fans of seeing the post exactly how it would look like on each social network and when the post was going out. They had no problems adapting to the approval process and found the entire interface very user-friendly.

For Market One Media Group, the biggest problem GAIN solved was ensuring content was getting approved well before our deadlines and having the content scheduled once it was approved. GAIN was a huge blessing for us. My team was saving hours of work a week because of GAIN, and it took a lot of mundane tasks out of their daily routine.

Many thanks to Hasnain for talking with us! Over the next few months, we’ll be sharing more tips and insights from the top agencies using GAIN to automate their content marketing approvals and improve their client relationships. Stay tuned!

If you’re ready to improve the content approval process with your team and clients, then get started with a free demo of GAIN today.